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12 Comments

Not that I agree with this scenario, but I think you missed one of the big reason for this paranoia in Arkansas. Facial recognition is just around the corner. Google has the capability but has not turned it on. It is now possible for us to take a picture of someone and find out who they are, where they live, how much they make and everything else about their lives.

Hey Jimbo – I haven’t heard about Google working on or having that capability. I know some software products have it… e.g. Aperture (RIP) and iPhoto, and Facebook. Can you point me to an article or video that describes the Google “feature”?

Besides trying to change careers to be a photographer, I have spent many years in the tech industry. In the late 90’s as the Internet was becoming main stream, several companies including L3 were laying thousands of miles of fiber around the country. A few years ago I was working on a project to add to a server farm that FBI maintains to keep finger prints, DNA records and pictures for facial recognition. This place has heavily guarded and it was like entering into a military base. I was only in a very small part of the complex, but the place was massive and who know how deep into the mountain it went. So your XBox spying on you should be the least of your concerns 🙂

I guess if you don’t do anything wrong, there is nothing to worry about. Look how quickly they figured out who the Boston bombers were. I believe they figured that out from all of the video surveillance and facial recognition. My company badge has my picture on it and I was told not to smile so it could be used for facial recognition. It also has an RFID chip in it and can be used as Identification at government facilities.

Yes, some of it is perception. It does not really matter what side of the political fence you are on. This has been going on since J. Edgar Hover was running the FBI. I think the biggest problem is most American are apathetic and have no clue who or what they are voting for. How many people even know who their local city councilman or women is?

I just wanted to add a bit more information on the power of Back Focusing. The main reason I use Back Focus; so, I don’t miss shots. To explain: One of the main reasons photographers miss shots is that they are messing with settings during a shoot. With focusing, there are two major setting that people can change for various reasons.

First: Manual and Auto Focus. As you mentioned, there are times you want to auto focus first then switch to manual. With Back Focus, you are in auto when pushing the button and manual when you let go. You never have to switch your camera to manual mode as all you need to do is not press the focus button.

The Second: Servo(Continuous) vs Single Shot. Both these modes have their uses, but they are usually hard to switch on the fly. If you set your Back Focus to use Servo focusing, then you are in Servo mode as long as you are pressing the back button, and when you let go of the back button, then you are in Single Shot mode. That is very convenient for mixed (portrait and action) photo shoots.

There are some downsides – using the back focus on portrait orientation can be weird without a grip, and in very low light, you won’t get the red lights for the focus points you get in Single Shot – but, once you get use Back Focus on Servo mode (and remember to take focus off the shutter), you can achieve any focus mode without ever making a change to your focus setting.